ST ALBANS
FOR
REFUGEES
During St Albans for Refugees' visit to the refugee camp at Dunkerque to deliver five generators, a volunteer took us to deliver a donated violin to Besh, a young highly intelligent and well educated Iraqi Kurdish man of about 21 years of age with a talent for music. His spoken English was excellent! The look on his face when he received his gift was a pleasure to behold.
Three volunteers from StAR were very honoured to be invited into the dwelling to spend time with the family.
Besh agreed to tell us his story.
He was at university when his father, a sergeant in the Iraqi Kurdistan Peshmerga, called to say that his village near Mosul was under threat from ISIS. Besh returned home and, with his mother and four brothers, fled to Turkey.
There is no welcome for Kurdish people in Turkey, however, and the family fled further to Greece. Once in Greece, the boys were systematically detained for five days and, upon release, they could not find their mother who had been moved on.
For days, not knowing if she was OK, the boys moved from camp to camp through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and eventually into Germany, searching for their mother.
They had an old broken phone with a picture of their mother that they had shown everywhere and, at a camp in Germany, a lady recognised the picture and told them that she thought that their mother had gone to France looking for them.
The boys made their way to the Calais Jungle, the only camp they knew of in France, where they did not find their mother. Exhausted, they stayed for a while before they heard about the camp at Grand-Synthe, Dunkerque.
With the phone no longer working at all, the boys went round the camp shouting out her name. Imagine their joy when they found their mother! She had been lost to them for 45 days and was now reunited with her sons, and they are relatively safe in the camp.
To hear this dignified young man quietly telling the story of his family, without bitterness or recrimination, while his mother watched on wordlessly was heartbreaking.
We asked if and why the family wanted to move to the UK.
Besh told us that the main thing he wanted was to live somewhere safe, in a democratic society, where he and his brothers could be educated and could work to support themselves and their mother.
He also told us that Britain had come to Iraq many times, bringing British culture and English language (mandatory in Iraqi schools). He felt that the UK would be the easiest place for the family to settle.
Besh and his mother shared their meal with us, in a little wooden hut no bigger than a garden shed, in a desolate camp in the north of France and we said our goodbyes with hugs.
Walking away from this bright and talented young man was upsetting. He and his family cannot go back to Mosul and they are not allowed to settle in the place where they would best fit in. In the meantime the world is losing out on the potential of this young man.
St Albans for Refugees is a registered charity (1167679) and a not for profit company limited by guarantee (company no. 09899830).